Valve Announce Big Picture Mode For Steam

Valve have announced their future plans of a Big Picture mode for Steam that will be aimed at controller and Television interactivity. The reveal came at GDC 2011, which kicked off in San Diego yesterday.

Not content with bringing Steamworks onto the Playstation 3 when Portal 2 arrives next month, Valve have used to move to help expand the availability of their gaming network and providing more "gaming opportunities for Steam partners" according to Valve's Doug Lombardi. This comes hot on the heels of the success of microtransaction charges that were introduced last year in popular team-based FPS Team Fortress 2. Speaking at GDC, game designer Robin Walker explained the reasoning behind the move.

We’ve come to understand what type of content sells well in TF2′s in-game store, and the various price points at which players value this content... Our players are continually teaching us what works and what doesn’t. Much of this feedback can be generalized to other titles on Steam, so we’re looking forward to sharing what we’ve learned with partners at GDC. We’re also interested in seeing partners get up and running with their own in-game economies, so they can collect game-specific data to inform their design decisions.

While details on the upcoming service are a little thin on the ground at the moment, word is that further details will be announced during the course of GDC 2011, so we'll keep you posted on further developments as they happen. [VG247]